When The Past Catches Up
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Natasha learns that her origins as the Black Widow are more questionable that she first knew, and she certainly didn't want her team to discover that at the same moment that she did.


It wasn't that late when Natasha found herself back at her hotel room, but she hadn't been out for very long in the first place. A quick glance at the watch on her wrist she'd ascended in the elevator had told her it was only ten minutes past nine, but she still felt exhausted. Though the current assignment was short it had been too personal for her liking, and personal wasn't something she liked dealing with at all, certainly less so with her team involved. The case involved a former KGB agent who had dealings with HYDRA, linking to a huge shipment of Stark Industries technology to fall into the wrong hands…that had angered Tony, which had pissed off Coulson, which had pissed off Fury…and the dominos had fallen until a quick look into the situation had revealed the main conspirator to be Matvei Romanoff.

Matvei. Her uncle.

Matvei Romanoff had been her fathers brother, though she had not seen him for over ten years. He had, once upon a time, taken her in after her parents death, helping her cope with the grief of losing both her mother and father in the same tragic accident. He had been the one who had taught her self defence and gotten her the first job she ever had for the KGB. He was the reason that she was as physically strong as she was today, and to find out that he had been involved with HYDRA from the very beginning shattered her. Not that she allowed anyone to see that. She was better at hiding her emotions than they gave her credit for.

Matvei had been the one to contact them, insisting that he had information that would be of value to them, insisting that his niece meet him in a hotel restaurant in New York City and he would give the information to her. They'd booked her a room and she had arrived two hours before the reservation to check in and change for dinner. She needed to make sure that despite the conversation they could blend in with the other diners and not cause a scene. Coulson arrived to brief her an hour before the reservation and provide her with the surveillance equipment that Stark had disguised as a set of earrings, letting her know where the other team mates would be. Stark would be monitoring from another room in the hotel, too much of a public icon to be any closer without causing a scene, Rogers and Banner would be at the bar, Coulson himself taking a phonecall in the entrance and Barton by the patio doors that lead to the dining area on the veranda.

Dinner hadn't gone well, to say the lease.

She'd caught Clint's eye as she walked into the restaurant, exactly on time. She immediately looked away, as if she'd only glanced at him in passing and approached the table where her uncle was waiting for. She used all of her self control not to dislocate his shoulder when he hugged her as a greeting, and managed not to headbutt him when he kissed both her cheeks. As he held out her chair for her she felt Clint's eyes sweeping over her and for once, the feeling of being watched was oddly comforting.

As the elevator arrived at her floor she pushed herself away from the back wall into the hallway. She'd spent two hours getting read; dressing, prepping herself, checking and rechecking her weaponry, forcing herself to believe that this was just another assignment, and it was all over before they'd even finished the entrees.

She heard footsteps at the end of the hall and moved quickly to her own room, struggling with her key for a moment since her hands were shaking. She heard Stark calling her name, his voice giving away that he had heard exactly what Matvei had told her, which meant that everyone had. She ignored his call, ducking into her room and closing the door behind her. She was still for a moment, watching the shadow beneath the door until it had disappeared, signalling that Stark had gone, and then moved quickly around the room.

She took off the shrug wrap that had lain around her shoulders, throwing it across the room to where it landed on the dresser, knocking over the perfume bottle. The stress was reaching breaking point and a lump began burning in her throat, tears leaking from her eyes and ruining the perfect make up she'd painted on her face. A thick sob escaped her and a voice at her ear reminded her of the surveillance. She pulled the earrings and pressed the shut off button on them before throwing them too across the room. The clips holding up her red hair were removed until it was hanging around her shoulders in furious curls. The dress had to go too. The black fabric felt like it was eating her skin, surrounding her like Matvei's words. She stood for a moment with the fabric pooled around her feet, finally feeling free, but the voice was still echoing in her mind. She kicked it away, pulling on the hotel robe over her underwear and threw herself down on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

Matvei had revealed everything, just as he promised.

In the space of twenty minutes, he revealed that he'd had dealings with one of the highest powers in HYDRA. He told her details about missions and interferences which Fury and Hill were confirming in her ear. After he was done listing his knowledge, he had started mentioning their past together, telling her that she'd always looked beautiful in black, how he never saw her smile since the day her parents died, how he remembered the first time she bruised a boy's sternum in her martial arts class.

She knew where it was going, and she knew that she should have stopped him before he bought up her first mission.

"I remember the darkness in your eyes after your first mission," he recalled. "I knew that they would rape you." He had said it so calmly and indifferently that the sudden silence in her ear was what made her heartrate speed up. "And yet, that darkness…it was the first time I regretted having your parents killed."

Natasha wasn't sure how much time had passed before the tears stopped falling and the sobs stobbed being muffled into her hands, but the trembling began to ease eventually. She heard a soft knocking at the door but she didn't move to answer it. Whoever was at the door either wanted to debrief her or talk about what happened but she didn't want to do either. She waited in silence until they had left before bowed her head once more.

A few minutes later there was another sound at her door. She whipped her head up, her hands reaching for a weapon to defend herself but in her rage she'd thrown them all across the room in various directions and didn't have any means of protection she could reach fast enough. So, she waited for whoever was entering the room to make themselves known.

Her tear stained cheeks would have been obvious, so she didn't move to wipe them. She wasn't surprised to see who it was stood there, half concealed by the illumination from the hall behind him in the darkness of her room, but she was surprised that he'd clearly gone to some means to get a key for her room. Clint was silent, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him before crossing to sit beside her on the mattress, keeping a small glap between them on top of the blankets.

"What do you want, Barton?" she asked, trying to keep the same tone of voice that she might have in normal circumstances.

He stared down at his hands, and she assumed he was too conflicted to look at her. "Your uncle is responsible for the deaths of over three thousand soldiers," he recited. "He arranged for an accident to kill both your parents so that he could train you to be the warrior he wanted you to be, and then he sent you on your first mission where he knew you were going to be severely abused by your captors…physically, mentally and sexually."

She gave a half shrug. "He was right though," she mused. "That mission changed me. After that, anything else was survivable."

"Did anyone know about that before tonight?" he asked.

"Coulson and Fury knew," she nodded. "They removed it from my file when I became a full time S.H.I.E.L.D agent."

He looked up at her and gave her a questioning gaze. "When he was talking about that mission…he made it sound like you were still so young."

"I was fourteen," she nodded.

"Fourteen?" he repeated, running a hand over his face. "Natasha, you were a child…"

"I wasn't a child," she shook her head. "Not since the day my parents died."

"But you should have been!" he argued. "What they did to you…"

"Bad things can happen to little girls, Clint," she whispered. "It's the way of the world."

He was silent, silence that she would have begged for fifteen seconds ago but now she wanted it to disappear before it deafened her. She could feel new emotions settling between them which had never been there before in their partnership. Shock. Disbelief. Disgust.

"How did you get in here?" she asked him. "I have the only key."

"I went to the lobby and told the receptionist that you were my wife," he mumbled, sounding distracted. Natasha turned to him, noticing that despite his words he seemed a thousand miles away but he continued to look down at hs hands. "Said that we had an argument and you looked me out. I couldn't…I had to come see if you were okay."

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me," he insisted.

"I'm fine," she told him. It was clear, however, that she wasn't fine because her hands were trembling and there were still tears on her cheeks. "Considering the worst parts of my life were just laid to rest on a restaurant table with my entire team able to hear."

There was a momentary silence where Clint wasn't sure what to say to that. "None of what happened was your fault," he whispered, finally raising his eyes to meet hers.

She took a moment to compose herself but failed. She knew what horrible, sleepless nights the first mission had caused her and she dreaded to think what awaited her when she was alone tonight. That mission was the only one that had ever haunted her. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Clint's knuckles were covered in blood and she frowned, taking it in her own hands and inspecting it.

"You hit somebody," she noted, recognising the marks as he fingertips dusted his skin.

"Matvei," he said simply.

She frowned. "You can't just hit him because he pissed me off," she told him.

"That wasn't why I hit him," he told her knowingly. "The others are taking him in, Fury's got a cell waiting for him. We were getting ready to leave, I said I'd make sure you were okay and we'd follow them back to base in the morning. I uh…I didn't like that he sent you into that place and allowed those men to hurt you like that…and I really didn't like that he'd upset you…so…" he trailed off, almost like a young boy who was proud of what he was done but ashamed to face his parents with it.

It made her smile a little to hear that familiar tone in his voice and she couldn't hold it back even though her tears still sat on her cheeks. As the corners of her lips raised ever so slightly, Clint put his arm around her. For a moment she allowed herself to fall against his shoulder, taking comfort from him but the chase kiss he planted on her temple made her inhale sharply and she sat up almost immediately after his lips left her skin. His hand fell from her shoulder to her back, keeping in place at the bottom of her spine as she wiped underneath her eyes.

"This isn't like me," she chastised herself, dropping her hands in surrender when she was too exhausted, both physically and mentally, to try anymore. "I'm a mess."

"You're beautiful," Clint mumbled, without even thinking about his words.

Natasha shook her head, unable to believe his words even though the hand on her back started trailing up and down her spine through the fabric of the robe.

"Everyone was pissed off when we heard what he said," he told her. "Rogers even had to get Banner out of the bar before he flipped off big time. None of us think you're defenceless or weak in any situation," he assured her. "But back then…you were a kid, Tasha. We all kind of think of you as our girl, you know? The idea that someone allowed that to happen to you…" he broke off.

At this, she finally let the tears overwhelm her, unable to hold in the sobs that racked her body. Clint pulled her close to her and held her reassuringly. This time she didn't pull away. Although she was deeply ashamed of having that mission revealed to everyone, she was glad that Clint, of all people, had made the most effort to come after her when she had fled the restaurant. He had his moments of being unpredicable but he was her partner and she trusted him with her life. After a few minutes, Natasha had cried herself hoarse and all that was left was the salty residue of her tears. She didn't pull back from him even when she was finished with her outburst, deciding instead to keep her head on his shoulder. With all the emotion she had held back before, refusing to allow Matvei to see how much his words had hurt her, she was exhausted. Clint also stayed in place. Emotionally, they had never been closer than this moment.

"Everyone's going back to base?" she asked, trying to break the silence after, her voice sounded pitiful to her.

"Already left," he confirmed, his voice distracted. "The arrest was pretty public considering I punched him in front of everyone. Coulson's doing his 'nothing to see here' act and we've been instructed to stay here tonight and calm down."

"You should go back," she suggested. "Coulson will need you to do your report."

"I'm not going anywhere," he insisted. "I'm not leaving you alone after this. You can insist you're fine all you want but I can see right through it. You forget how well I know you."

Natasha didn't know what to say to that. He was right - she wasn't fine and she didn't want to be alone, but she couldn't find the words to confirm this without sounding more desperate than she cared to. Even though she said nothing he didn't leave, he stayed in place and held her just as tightly until words did return to her. "Thank you," she sighed.

"Don't thank me," he shrugged. "I'm sorry you had to go through all that," he whispered after.

"It's in the past now," she defended quietly.

"It shouldn't have happened in the first place," he insisted. "I know we all pressed for you to get this intel, but I never wanted you to be handed over to someone who hurt you."

He wondered why it was causing him so much discomfort to see her like this - was it because he had an underlying need to protect her against something which had already occured? Or was it because he'd never seen her so rattled by someone's words that she'd retreated to a dark hotel room and had sobbed on his shoulder?

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I care about you," he whispered. His voice quiet, but the room was so still that his words reached her with ease. "I don't want to see you hurt." Natasha was silent for a moment and he was worried that he'd crossed a line by telling her that, but the silence was broken with a yawn moments later. "You're tired, you should get some sleep."

She nodded softly. Her mind was drained as well as her body, and the warmth from Clint's form wasn't helping her desire to remain awake.

He nodded his head back to the bed and she followed his gaze. "Come on, lay down."

She stood up, moving to the top end of the bed and pulling the blankets down. She removed the robe from her body, unashamed to be in her just her underwear with Clint - they'd done undercover missions countless times, he'd seen it all before anyway - and noticed that he was removing his shirt and pants, leaving him in just his undershirt and boxers. He mirrored her completely, following her into the bed and settled beside her when she lay comfortably. She closed her eyes and sighed, one small movement resting her head in the gap between his neck and shoulder. One of his arms wrapped around her, resting precariously on her hip beneath the blankets. He didn't dare move any further as he lay beside her but was surprised when her hand rose up and took hold of his. "Clint?"

"Yeah," he replied in a whisper.

"I care about you too," she told him through closed eyes.

With the closeness between them she was aware of his heartrate increasing, but the only action he took was to squeeze her hand and place a kiss to her temple again. This time he lingered for some time and she felt his warm exhale against her skin. She kept her eyes closed and after a while was convinced she had assured him she was asleep. Part of her thought he might move away once he thought she was sleeping but he kept holding her. He was obviously planning not to leave her tonight and she was glad for it. She felt him move her hand and then the touch of soft lips against her knuckles. She had to hold back a small smile, so much so that she turned her head into the pillow a fraction, but Clint had seen her lips move at the last moment and didn't even try to contain the breath that escaped him with that smile.

"Night, Tasha," he whispered, placing his lips against her forehead this time and allowing himself to fall asleep there.


End file.
